Mantua. A Street. | |
| |
Enter ROMEO. | |
| Rom. If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep, | |
| My dreams presage some joyful news at hand: | 4 |
| My bosom’s lord sits lightly in his throne; | |
| And all this day an unaccustom’d spirit | |
| Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts. | |
| I dreamt my lady came and found me dead;— | 8 |
| Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think,— | |
| And breath’d such life with kisses in my lips, | |
| That I reviv’d, and was an emperor. | |
| Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess’d, | 12 |
| When but love’s shadows are so rich in joy! | |
| |
Enter BALTHASAR, booted. | |
| News from Verona! How now, Balthasar? | |
| Dost thou not bring me letters from the friar? | 16 |
| How doth my lady? Is my father well? | |
| How fares my Juliet? That I ask again; | |
| For nothing can be ill if she be well. | |
| Bal. Then she is well, and nothing can be ill; | 20 |
| Her body sleeps in Capel’s monument, | |
| And her immortal part with angels lives. | |
| I saw her laid low in her kindred’s vault, | |
| And presently took post to tell it you. | 24 |
| O! pardon me for bringing these ill news, | |
| Since you did leave it for my office, sir. | |
| Rom. Is it even so? then I defy you, stars! | |
| Thou know’st my lodging: get me ink and paper, | 28 |
| And hire post-horses; I will hence to-night. | |
| Bal. I do beseech you, sir, have patience: | |
| Your looks are pale and wild, and do import | |
| Some misadventure. | 32 |
| Rom. Tush, thou art deceiv’d; | |
| Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do. | |
| Hast thou no letters to me from the friar? | |
| Bal. No, my good lord. | 36 |
| Rom. No matter; get thee gone, | |
| And hire those horses: I’ll be with thee straight. [Exit BALTHASAR. | |
| Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night. | |
| Let’s see for means: O mischief! thou art swift | 40 |
| To enter in the thoughts of desperate men. | |
| I do remember an apothecary, | |
| And hereabouts he dwells, which late I noted | |
| In tatter’d weeds, with overwhelming brows, | 44 |
| Culling of simples; meagre were his looks, | |
| Sharp misery had worn him to the bones: | |
| And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, | |
| An alligator stuff’d, and other skins | 48 |
| Of ill-shap’d fishes; and about his shelves | |
| A beggarly account of empty boxes, | |
| Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds, | |
| Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses, | 52 |
| Were thinly scatter’d, to make up a show. | |
| Noting this penury, to myself I said | |
| An if a man did need a poison now, | |
| Whose sale is present death in Mantua, | 56 |
| Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him. | |
| O! this same thought did but fore-run my need, | |
| And this same needy man must sell it me. | |
| As I remember, this should be the house: | 60 |
| Being holiday, the beggar’s shop is shut. | |
| What, ho! apothecary! | |
| |
Enter Apothecary. | |
| Ap. Who calls so loud? | 64 |
| Rom. Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor; | |
| Hold, there is forty ducats; let me have | |
| A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear | |
| As will disperse itself through all the veins | 68 |
| That the life-weary taker may fall dead, | |
| And that the trunk may be discharg’d of breath | |
| As violently as hasty powder fir’d | |
| Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb. | 72 |
| Ap. Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua’s law | |
| Is death to any he that utters them. | |
| Rom. Art thou so bare, and full of wretchedness, | |
| And fear’st to die? famine is in thy cheeks, | 76 |
| Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes, | |
| Contempt and beggary hang upon thy back; | |
| The world is not thy friend nor the world’s law: | |
| The world affords no law to make thee rich; | 80 |
| Then be not poor, but break it, and take this. | |
| Ap. My poverty, but not my will, consents. | |
| Rom. I pay thy poverty, and not thy will. | |
| Ap. Put this in any liquid thing you will | 84 |
| And drink it off; and, if you had the strength | |
| Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight. | |
| Rom. There is thy gold, worse poison to men’s souls, | |
| Doing more murders in this loathsome world | 88 |
| Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell: | |
| I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none. | |
| Farewell; buy food, and get thyself in flesh. | |
| Come, cordial and not poison, go with me | 92 |
| To Juliet’s grave, for there must I use thee. [Exeunt. | |
